? Walk your dog on a leash and keep your cat in the house. Every time I saw a dog that got beat up by a possum or a raccoon or a fox or a dingo it made me want to choke-slam somebody.
? Stop leaving chocolate and grapes and shit where your dog can get at them, and please, for the love of Doritos, put your weed away. Because at least once a month a dog just houses its owner’s stash, and while it’s kind of hilarious, (1) it makes your dog feel like crap, and (2) loud is expensive. I mean, you really can’t get a dog if you want to still live like a careless slob. I do, that’s why I never got one. Sometimes I leave deliciously stinky underwear on the bathroom floor or fall asleep with sushi next to the bed or forget to tie the trash with the old pork chop bones in it up tight. All careless things that could lead to hundreds of dollars of treatment at my vet and a stern side-eye from the staff at the front desk. I have seen dogs vomit: socks, toys, jewelry, bottles, soap, and underwear. Put your things away already. Are digital pets a real thing yet? I saw Gone Girl, go order a robot dog.
? Name your pet something reasonable that people who maybe aren’t hip to the zeitgeist can spell and figure out. Yeah, I like Game of Thrones, too, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be able to find your cat Daenerys Targaryen with ease in our computer system. Far be it from a woman with a cat named Helen Keller to criticize, but at least the average third-grader could spell that. When Lord of the Rings was poppin’, we had a lot of éowyns and Faramirs and Galadriels coming in for booster shots and heartworm tests, and I never read those books, hoe. And these nerds would take it as a personal affront that I needed a hint at how to spell their dogs’ names. Fine, tell me who Kizzy Reynolds is and then we’ll talk. JUST NAME IT WRIGLEY LIKE EVERYONE ELSE IN CHICAGO, GOD.
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I am calm in a crisis. Like the time that one dog got hit by a car right in front of us on the street or the time that cat had a heart attack as her owner handed me her carrier. Once, after a dog was euthanized, we witnessed a funeral ritual in our office that I found surprisingly moving, even though I’m convinced that whatever spirits there happen to be, they’re all in collusion against me. I’ve held a lot of scared hands, hugged a lot of people who bravely came alone to put their best friends down, and cried a lot of tears with people I don’t really know, but I kind of do? Because as they neared the end they were in the office every other week or because I was there when Megan was pregnant with her first baby. He is now ten years old and his sister is eight and they’re on their second dog, geez where does the time go!?!
I am also very dependable and incredibly loyal, which some might read as a lack of motivation to better myself or make anything other than a lateral move. But I was twenty-two when I started this job. And you know what? Sometimes it really is okay to just have a fucking job. Not a passion, not a career, but a steadfast source of biweekly income deposited directly into a checking account from which food and medicine and apps one totally forgot about having downloaded will be paid for. A job you are good at, that makes you feel like you’re doing something good in the world. I’ve had a life: I have been a dropout, a deadbeat, and a student; I have lived on Damen, on Central, on Hoyne, on Lunt, on Albion, then back to Lunt again; I’ve purchased ten pairs of glasses, added at least a dozen trash tattoos, read hundreds of books, watched countless hours of television, lost old friends, made new ones, and had my heart broken approximately 289 times. I’m moving away and it terrifies me to leave the one constant I’ve had in my entire life, but it’s time to start a new chapter. So I need a new job, and I’m available to start immediately.
Feelings Are a Mistake
I am trying to adjust to living in a house where there is such a thing as a limit on “screen time.” This is a new concept for me. My original plan for once I’d made the move east on I-94 had been to get an office space or—in line with my misguided, unrealistic fantasy of myself as an artist—a studio space. The kind of place in which I would hang tapestries and burn sage sticks and surround myself with real artwork and plants. This is not the kind of person I have been so far in my life, one who “clears energy”; I just push the towers of books and trash on my desk aside to make room for my battered, gravy-splattered laptop and mine the cloud of negative energy above my head for material. My new fictional office involved an artful desk, the kind you’d find in a hip design magazine, and one of those computer monitors that’s as big as a garage door and wholly unnecessary for someone who writes about scowling at nature on the Internet. But in my pretend world I also dabble in, oh, I don’t know, Web design? Espionage?! Something that requires a big, fancy monitor.
In reality, I’ve scrolled through the listings for tiny office spaces in abandoned-looking buildings with the sole intention of escaping there to watch R-rated movies uninterrupted, ones with fucking and curse words. Then I wouldn’t have to sit with my finger hovering over the pause button as I listen for tweenage footfalls banging down the hall to ruin the fun I’ve earned for staying alive this long. I want to eat room-temperature soup while watching entire seasons of The Real Housewives of New York, free of questions like “Who is that?” or “Why is this show interesting to you?”
I mean, I’m 137 years old—I can have screen time whenever I want! I bought twelve handheld computer devices, and, yes, I absolutely must have them on my person at all times; I pay the Internet providers so I can connect to all of the GIFs and memes I need; I stood by awkwardly as the gentleman from DirecTV connected these 2,469 channels. And sure, I’ll probably be so busy watching a video on the laptop and listening to the new James Blake record on my phone that I’ll forget about that CSI: Miami marathon I wanted to watch on the True Crime channel, but it’s worth a hundred dollars a month just to know that if I wanted to watch it, I could.